A Land Imagined
Despite my general appreciation for the cinema of
Asia, Singaporean films are not my area of expertise. In fact, I think I haven’t
seen any at all (at least that I can recall as explicitly Singaporean, though
some Indian crime films have had scenes set there when the gangsters are in
exile and possibly Crazy Rich Asians ) before I watched “A Land
Imagined”. This was a film I was inclined to like and have heavy bias
towards because it fit into many categories I appreciate. A film about
immigration embedded into a noir mystery, set in a city I have a lot of
appreciation for, it was always likely I’d enjoy the film. In the end, my bias didn’t
matter because A Land Imagined turned out to be one of the better films I’ve
seen this year.
It’s a film that starts out with a conventional enough
narrative of a detective, world weary and aged, looking for a missing person
and having to go to the seedier parts of the city to get information. The story
could have gone towards a normal neo-noir narrative but chooses not to. In fact,
this isn’t a film that captures you because of the narrative. The storyline is
hard to follow and becomes downright trippy by the end, where it’s less clear
how much is reality and imagination. There’s a reason for this. The characters
spend a lot of time communicating online through the world of online game and
both protagonists (the detective and the missing construction worker) both
suffer from insomnia. So the film captures that feeling that everyone
who’s suffered through a day after not get enough sleep for a while understands
all too well. Reality seems hard to grasp then.
As I’ve said, this isn’t a film for the storyline as
much as it is for the sub-narratives. If ever a film showed the opposite of
another, then this one is the world away from Crazy Rich Asians. Every character
in the film, other than the detective, is an immigrant and much of the film
focuses on the lives of the construction workers who are working on land
reclamation projects. The director chooses to focus on the living conditions
and friendships that spring up across these people, from different backgrounds
and nationalities, brought together by circumstance. And it is in these scenes,
where they discuss home or ambitions, that the movie feels the most poignant.
At its core, the film seems to be about loneliness. Yes,
characters meet and talk and are rarely alone but still the film positions them
as outsiders. Certainly, they are excluded from the city they are building and
expanding and even from each other it seems that the attempt to find connection
is never fully realized.
While the film is far from perfect, there’s definitely
a lot worth watching. And it seems that the future ones from this director may
be even more interesting as this attempt to cover a less seen side of Singapore
could bring further fresh stories if pursued.
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